Watching TV

I have not watched a lot of TV in my life, not since I was a kid.  I really only bother if I happen to be on vacation in a foreign country.  There will be a TV in my hotel room and since I travel in Spanish speaking countries I find the hotel television an invaluable source of Spanish language practice and cultural immersion.  I began doing this in Mexico City where I became, to my shame and embarrassment, hooked on one of the local telenovelas, or Mexican soap operas, "La Mujer de Judas" (Judas' Woman) Here's the link if you want to check it out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x02WeHQxiUk&list=PL8329F37C6B2922B3&index=72  When I returned home to Canada I would assiduously troll all through the Internet and Youtube to pick up episodes that I'd missed.  I lived for a while vicariously through this ridiculous soap.  It also did wonders for my Spanish.

I still don't have TV at home and I don't think that is ever going to change.  I am no longer as judgmental about TV or its viewers and I have come to appreciate that there are decent programs if you're a little bit discerning and selective.  I have particularly become fond of three recent home-brewed concoctions, "Little Mosque On the Prairie"; Schitt's Creek; and the Murdoch Mysteries (even if my uppity ex-friend thinks the third selection to be "badly-written"), all worth having a look at.  I get to see them on my laptop thanks to CBC online.  I have also seen almost every single vintage Perry Mason episode I have been able to find on Youtube.  For a while I was watching these programs every night, or until I ran out of episodes.  Now I stick to documentaries and the odd movie, almost all in Spanish.

I have always been woefully out of touch with what's on TV and likely always will be.  I used to be proud of this.  I would proudly reply to those dumb enough to ask me what I watched on TV that "I don't watch television.  I read books." 

When I was fifteen I decided to unplug.  I was seated as usual after school in our basement rec-room watching with my older brother reruns of Bewitched, the Flintstones, and Gilligan's Island.  I had been a Christian, which is to say a teenage Jesus Freak already for nine months or so.  I said to my brother, you can sit here and rot your mind if you want, I have better things to do.  So I left the room and set out to devote my life to doing better things.  My brother seemed indifferent but it was also the final death nail to our relationship.  We had never been close as siblings and he had for several years been bullying and abusive.  It only occurred to me many years later that it was quite likely that this was all he had left of me as his brother and now suddenly I had taken that away from him.  He never articulated his sense of rejection, if this is indeed what he experienced.  He might well have been glad to be finally completely rid of me.

My life has been made all the richer for staying away from TV.  I could think, feel, live and imagine without comparing my life to a TV star or a sit-com plot.  I steered clear of the manipulations of pop-culture and American mass media, cultivating a distinct and uncontaminated identity.  My speech remained relatively uninfluenced and untainted by whatever nonsense lines were being read on the idiot box by actors who didn't care a damn about me or any of their brainless fans. 

This also added to my experience of social isolation, especially in the workplace.  TV was the great social homogenizer and I wouldn't be homogenized, rather like the congealed lump of nutmeg powder that never gets dissolved into the cheese sauce.  Then you suddenly bite into it while shoveling the cauliflower into your mouth and Oh Boy!  But this is what everyone seemed to talk about during coffee break or later in the pub or the coffee shop.  Whatever the current plotline and character antics were on...pick any program.  I didn't have a clue what they were talking about, but for the little I read about in my daily Globe and Mail.

I particularly recall how in the nineties Ellen DeGeneres publicly came out as a lesbian on her TV show.  I read about it in the Globe because, of course, it was news.  But I had never seen an episode of her program.  Then one morning while walking to work I noticed a small group of young people hanging out for a cigarette break outside of the store where they worked and one was saying quite loudly "And I was just on the edge of my seat, waiting for her to say it, and I kept saying, okay, Ellen, come out of the closet.  It's time.  Ellen, come out of the closet."  I turned my head and called to them all "Ellen who?" and kept walking.